"Banks is a phenomenon." -- William Gibson

Two and a half millennia ago in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe, the artifact appeared.

It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.

Now it is back.

Diplomat Genar-Hofoen of Special Circumstances is sent to investigate but, sidetracked by an old flame and the spoiled-brat operative Ulver Seich, and faced with the systematic depravities of a race who call themselves the A­ffront, it's anyone's guess whether he'll succeed . . .

Praise for the Culture series:

"Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution." -Independent on Sunday
"Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future." -Guardian

"Jam-packed with extraordinary invention." -Scotsman

"Compulsive reading." -Sunday Telegraph

The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
The State of the Art

Other books by Iain M. Banks:
Against a Dark Background
Feersum Endjinn
The Algebraist

Also now available:
The Culture: The Drawings- an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks' Culture series of novels in incredible detail.